Jane Kelsey: ‘As expected, access to the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement reveals major holes in the government’s “fact sheets”’, says Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey.
An initial review of the most controversial chapters confirms that New Zealand will have to comply with onerous new obligations and lose the future capacity to regulate in ways that an elected government thinks appropriate.
The investment chapter goes beyond New Zealand’s existing agreements in numerous ways. For example, a foreign investor from a TPP country that is party to a contract for oil exploration, a PPP contract for water, sewage or toll roads, or a mining or forestry concession with central government or an SOE exercising a delegated power, can use the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process if it wants to claim its rights are breached, even if the contract requires them to use NZ courts or some other dispute mechanism.